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Re: Proposal to remove archs (comments by Ben Collins on sparc)



forwarding this message to where the discussion is taking place.

* Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> [2005-03-14 21:05]:
> I'm not subscribed to debian-boot, so I'll preface this with that fact
> that I have not read any of the discussion so far, so excuse a rehash.
> 
> Simply take this in. I'm not posting to drag out any further debate, only
> to add my two cents.
> 
> I think removing sparc would be a huge mistake. When people like David
> Miller, who currently works for Redhat, have switched to Debian because we
> support this architecture, it means a lot. Davd develops sparc64 using
> Debian now.
> 
> Removing our support for the architecture only opens the door for someone
> else to do so. Sparc, especially UltraSPARC, is a widely used system, and
> is commonly used to install Linux on. The distribution of choice is
> Debian.
> 
> Not only that but UltraSPARC has far more users, and is supported far
> better by kernel developers than other architectures that are slated to
> remain in the list.
> 
> ia64 is near death. Even Intel is waving the white flag on it. PowerPC,
> while great, is mostly for hackers. Most people don't by a PowerMac to
> install Linux on, and those non-Mac PPC machines mostly have to do with
> embedded development, and not a userbase.
> 
> That's the end of my pro-sparc rant. Hate to see ideas like this even hit
> the floor. How about pruning packages rather than architectures? Cleaning
> us out of cruft has far more usefulness than removing official support for
> architectures. The package list grows at a far greater rate that our
> architecture list, and consumes far greater resources than any single
> architecture.
> 
> Remove one architecture, and you remove an entire userbase. Remove 10% of
> our least used packages and I bet you wont lose but a handful of users.
> 
> -- 
> Debian     - http://www.debian.org/
> Linux 1394 - http://www.linux1394.org/
> Subversion - http://subversion.tigris.org/
> WatchGuard - http://www.watchguard.com/

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/



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